International outrage doesn't deter the Taliban from going ahead with the destruction of 2,000-year-old Buddha statues in Bamiyan.

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Rory McCarthy

March 12, 2001

ISSUE DATE: March 12, 2001

UPDATED: November 9, 2012 17:28 IST

SELF-MUTILATION: The statue of Buddha in Bamiyan was on top of the Taliban's hit list

Hewn out of the sand stone cliff-face in the 2nd century A.D., the two monolithic Buddha statues in Bamiyan in central Afghanistan withstood the invasions of Genghis Khan in the 13th century, and of his brutal descendant Timur.

Last week the priceless carvings, witness to the ancient cultural riches of a country since ravaged by war, had some ugly visitors - Taliban tanks. Lining up in front of the statues, they blasted the 2,000-year-old statues. Afghanistan's Taliban militia, pushing ahead with its hardline Islamic vision, has ruled that such statues are the "shrines of infidels".

"All statues and non-Islamic shrines located in different parts of the country must be broken, "the movement's supreme leader, Mulla Mohammad Omar said this past week." Allah Almighty is the only real shrine and all false symbols should be smashed." He has ordered soldiers from the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice to begin a massive and unprecedented wave of destruction.

Mulla Omar's order, the latest in a long line of anti-cultural and misogynistic rulings, appeared to be a stark response to the visit of a group of western diplomats who travelled to Kabul after reports that ancient statues in the capital's National Museum were being destroyed.

The diplomats met the Taliban's Information and Culture Minister Qudratullah Jamal on February 26 but were not allowed into the museum. The building houses a collection of rare artefacts dating back to an era when Afghanistan was a centre of Buddhist and Greek civilisations, long before invading Arab armies brought Islam in the 7th century A.D.

More than a dozen pre-Islamic exhibits have been damaged in recent months by zealous Taliban soldiers, including a 2,000-year-old Buddhist statue. Most of the museum's finest treasures were looted in the factional fighting which followed the departure of the Soviet forces after their decade-long occupation.

Over the past 20 years, many of Afghanistan's richest archaeological finds have been smuggled out to Peshawar in Pakistan and sold to private collectors around the world. Others have been destroyed by artillery and rocket fire.

In the past, Mulla Omar has ordered non-Islamic artefacts to be protected, although with little effect as the fate of the Bamiyan Buddhas show. Ninety miles west of Kabul, Bamiyan represents Afghanistan's finest archaeological site. The larger of the two Buddhas, at 55 m, is the world's tallest standing Buddha.

The surrounding land was mined during the Soviet occupation and the sculptures have remained at the centre of a war zone. In September 1998, the head and folds of the robes of the shorter Buddha, which is 37 m tall, were blown off with explosives by a Taliban commander. He then fired rockets at the groin and the intricate folds of theclothes of the larger statue.

Other ancient sites in Afghanistan now at risk bear witness to India's own history. Archaeologists working in Bamiyan - which was a centre of Buddhism before Genghis Khan's arrival - also found rock edicts dating back to Emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century B.C. and other Buddhist stupas. Hadda, in the eastern province of Nangarhar, and Ghazni, 60 miles south of Kabul, are also home to Buddhist stupas and other sacred objects.

UNCARING CURATORS: A Taliban official with a Buddha statue at the National Museum, a dozen ancient images have been destroyed

Mulla Omar's decree was greeted with revulsion across the world. "There can be only one priority for the government - to rebuild the country, to renew the fabric of society and to relieve the immense suffering and deprivation of the people of Afghanistan," said Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general.

India's normally slow-to-react Ministry of External Affairs cobbled up a harsh statement condemning the fatwa as a "barbaric act". The US State Department was equally forthright. "Deliberate destruction of statues and sculpture held as sacred by peoples of different faiths is incomprehensible, as is the Taliban's utter rejection of the treasures of

Afghanistan's past," said spokesman Philip Reeker. Even the Afghans themselves aren't unanimous on the edict. Hamid Karzai, a former deputy foreign minister in the ousted Burhanuddin Rabbani regime, said the statues are no longer a part of religion but a part of the country's history, as the pharaohs' tombs are in Egypt.

"Afghanistan has been a staunch Muslim country for 1,200 years and the mullahs have never tried to destroy the statues," he said. Buddhists worldwide were outraged. Sri Lanka launched a major diplomatic effort to save the statues.

Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar asked his envoys in India, Thailand, Myanmar and Nepal to work out a common strategy to deal with the threat. UNESCO chief Koichiro Matsuura appealed to the Taliban to reconsider its decision. "It will be a real cultural disaster," he said. "This heritage is central to Afghanistan's memory and identity and is a landmark in the history of other civilisations."

It is not yet clear whether the Taliban, who face a drought and a severe famine this year, are hoping to use the uproar as a bargaining chip to ease UN sanctions which were tightened in January as punishment for the militia's refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden.

Senior Taliban figures have recently spoken of the possibility of negotiating over bin Laden, the Saudi dissident charged in the US with the bombing of two American embassies in east Africa in 1998 which claimed 224 lives.

In another positive move, Mulla Omar has banned poppy cultivation, an edict which the UN admits has been largely followed by Afghanistan's farmers and which directly answers international demands for the Taliban to stop the production of heroin.

But it would be difficult and perhaps embarrassing for Mulla Omar to reverse his latest decree. The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press quoted an unyielding Mulla Omar: "I don't care about anything else but Islam.

"The Taliban's foreign minister, Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, made it clear there would be no turning back. "If the world has concerns, we are ready to listen to them and we will give them our explanations if they want to listen. It is their right to be convinced or not to be convinced," he said. The fate of some of the world's rarest treasures appears sealed.

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